Is science really a search for truth? Are we really brave enough to follow the evidence wherever it goes? Executive Producer Logan Craft shares insights on making Expelled and how it has influenced the continuing debate over the limits of science.
Ben Stein throws caution and sense to the wind (courtesy of TBN), and the Pharyngula crowd go Web 3.0 B.C. on us. Not to be left out in the cold on a Motive-promoted film, the Anti-Defamation League also excoriates the film’s appropriation of the Holocaust.
One of the surest ways of controlling debate is to be so obnoxious and persistent that webmasters get so tired of moderating things that they just shut everything down. It’s doubly effective: it makes the hosting website look bad, and it shuts down opposing rhetoric.
Ono, her son Sean Ono Lennon, and Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son from his first marriage, along with privately held publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc filed suit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan seeking to bar the filmmakers and their distributors from continuing to use “Imagine” in the movie.
“It’s a dark day for the subject of evolution in the U.S. Two years ago I made a pro-evolution movie,” says Olson. “I’m so tired of reading the rants of academics on these blogs who know nothing about the film world but feel certain Expelled flopped because the critics didn’t like it.”
Finally, I’ve come across the kind of detail that Expelled audiences need in order to have a balanced view of detractors’ criticisms. It comes courtesy of Discovery Institute’s Casey Luskin, widely reviled in the anti-ID camp as a biased “quote-miner.”
“That’s all nonsense, for babies… Only fit for babies, do you hear?” Miraz’ response to Prince Caspian sounds like the reaction of many to those who believe God, or some Intelligence, had something to do with life as we know it today.
Cruising through the cinematic zeitgeist meter that Rotten Tomatoes has become, a sampling of opinions regarding Expelled posted there highlights a curious discrepancy when the film is compared to its celluloid siblings, such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11.
Although I question some of it’s heavy-handed imagery and a sharp change in tone in the middle, it is an enlightening look into something most people don’t know anything about. So you may want to check it out. After all, your right to think for yourself is at stake.
My first question as I approached Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed was how I should judge the film. I knew the film was going to be presenting something I didn’t agree with. That is to say that I knew going in that I’d have plenty of things to pick at. Indeed I do.
“It is chilling that we are raising a generation of citizens who believe it is their right to mandate the appropriate views that other citizens should have,” says Greg Lukianoff in the L.A. Times this week. “It’s a formula for totalitarianism.”
Rather than rehash a wealth of issues already covered in depth here at SteinWatch and elsewhere, I dove right in to try to get some hard answers from Mathis about those existing controversial issues. You may judge for yourself how successful I was in getting satisfactory answers.
Motive has just this morning made the full audio recording of the event available for downloading. We’ve got the link to a complete, unabridged recording of the press conference. The segment with Myers’ interjection begins at about the 35-minute mark.
The film’s producers are now claiming that the film will be opening on over 1000 screens. One thing they’ve certainly got to know: how many prints of the film have been struck. I just hope they manage to get those prints to the right theaters.
XVIVO demands that Premise Media “remove the infringing segment from all copies of the ‘Expelled’ film prior to its scheduled commercial release.” Meanwhile, the bad reviews continue to trickle in, and Motive still hasn’t delivered on promised transcripts.
“The world has been evolved, not created,” wrote Erasmus Darwin. “It has arisen little by little from a small beginning, and has increased through the activity of the elemental forces embodied in itself… What a sublime idea of the infinite might of the great Architect!”
The collection of articles is the most serious-minded resource I’ve seen countering the claims made in the movie. If you see the movie, you pretty much should read these articles, too. They also do a pretty decent job of evaluating the film as entertainment.
Wow. How much commentary does one need? We knew it would happen eventually, and it did… Limbaugh weighs in on Expelled and misquotes “Hawkins.” Plus, the Atheist Ethicist launches the “Truth Ticket” campaign to offset Expelled’s boxoffice.
The doses of false doctrine given at public schools and universities are so big that they overwhelm the resistance that a tiny dose would provoke. The normal student is corrupted beyond redemption, and will drive the genius who resists out of the country if he can.
Before ten more years had elapsed, the Neo-Darwinians were practically running current Science. It was 1906; I was fifty; and I found that most people were unable to understand how I could be an Evolutionist and not a Neo-Darwinian, or why I habitually derided Neo-Darwinism as a ghastly idiocy.
I really recommend a good read through all of Errol Morris’ column and the attached comments. You might learn a thing or two about the state of documentary filmmaking; and you might realize that Expelled is not nearly as manipulative as it might be.
It’s too bad that the Concerned Women of America choose to go whole hog on the partisan approach. Good thing J. Matt Barber drew our attention to journalistic objectivity. Whew! All of that, really, is just frothy, biased hyperbole, though.
If you can’t get the entertainment reporters to cover the film, maybe you can rein in the political correspondents by changing the venue of discussion. So here’s a roundup of news about Expelled as politics. The lead: Huckabee endorses Expelled… on camera, no less!
Using loaded terms breaks down communication. But a really good solution when conversing about the controversy is to seek clarification about the meaning of terms used, and not assume that everyone who uses terms you don’t like (on either side) is a propagandist.
“From my perspective,” says Myers, “I don’t care how much money they make. They can get as filthy rich as they want. I don’t care. What I want is for people to go to that movie and see how bad it is; I want them to come in prepared to be critically-minded.”
Blue Collar Scientist reports that his TIVO system has alerted him to a half-hour program coming up this weekend. “‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ will air on April 6 at 11:30 PM Alaska Daylight Time on FAMNET… The program appears on my schedule as an infomercial.”
I caution us all to neither celebrate Expelled unthinkingly because, like other pigs, it’s a pig; nor to dismiss it as a mere pig, because it’s a snowflake, too. And I think if you examine it closely you’ll find that what you do with it after you’ve touched it can be very enriching.
With regard to yesterday’s telecon: as I mentioned to start with, Myers does have some legitimate complaints. His personal bias in the whole situation, though, has (I feel) blinded him to certain facts; perhaps he just isn’t listening well any more. And that would be understandable, to a degree.
I’m blogging this live… And in the middle of Motive’s telecon, Meyers somehow managed to crash the call… and interject himself into the Q&A with Stein, Ruloff, Logan, and Mathis! After he made some accusations of lies and doing the “dishonorable thing,” Meyers did ring off.
Like the screening in Minneapolis a week ago which sparked last weekend’s controversy over P.Z. Meyers being barred from the screening, tonight’s screening is being coordinated by Motive Entertainment, the firm handling the film’s promotions.
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